Having taken both Latin and Spanish, I wonder how Romance languages evolved. It seems Spanish and Italian are closer than Latin and Italian. Might Italian (in rudimentary form) have existed, say, 2000 years ago, being spoken in Italy, while Latin was reserved for formal situations, such as inscriptions and religious occasions? (It appears Greek never went through all this.) What if this "split" had never taken place and Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc. still spoke Latin?
How did Latin die?
- Thread starter Electric Earth
- Start date
MrP
Banned
As Doctor Grant says of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, Latin never did die; it evolved into something else. The sort of Latin we have records of is almost solely upper-class literary Latin. There's graffiti in Pompeii which is in the vernacular, and some of the Classical authors use lower class formations consciously to evoke a particular milieu. Ooh, that sounded pompous! 
We're very lucky with Ancient Greek to have a few splendidly lower class sources from 2,000 years ago that we can compare to the high-falutin' stuff. I refer, of course, to the New Testament. Latin's a less fluid and evocative language than Greek, incidentally, and it's still changed considerably from Ancient Greek. e.g. stasis in Ancient Greek means political turmoil or even civil war. In modern it means bus stop. That said, one can make oneself understood to modern Greeks if one doesn't mind speaking slowly and having them wonder why one's mispronouncing everything.*
* In modern Greek epsilon, eta and alpha+iota are all pronounced e as in bet. It's almost certainly one of the reasons for Greece's poor showing in literacy tables.
We're very lucky with Ancient Greek to have a few splendidly lower class sources from 2,000 years ago that we can compare to the high-falutin' stuff. I refer, of course, to the New Testament. Latin's a less fluid and evocative language than Greek, incidentally, and it's still changed considerably from Ancient Greek. e.g. stasis in Ancient Greek means political turmoil or even civil war. In modern it means bus stop. That said, one can make oneself understood to modern Greeks if one doesn't mind speaking slowly and having them wonder why one's mispronouncing everything.* * In modern Greek epsilon, eta and alpha+iota are all pronounced e as in bet. It's almost certainly one of the reasons for Greece's poor showing in literacy tables.
Latin
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, with it's isolation and depopulation, various dialects of Latin became increasingly isolated from each other. Eventually they evolved into separate languages. The church used the more formal form of Latin. Like the previous post mentions, the Romance languages evolved from the colloquial forms of Latin. Germanic languages went through a similar transformation with English, Dutch, and German all coming from the same root language, a western Germanic dialect. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish came from an eastern dialect.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, with it's isolation and depopulation, various dialects of Latin became increasingly isolated from each other. Eventually they evolved into separate languages. The church used the more formal form of Latin. Like the previous post mentions, the Romance languages evolved from the colloquial forms of Latin. Germanic languages went through a similar transformation with English, Dutch, and German all coming from the same root language, a western Germanic dialect. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish came from an eastern dialect.
ninebucks
Banned
The Roman Empire whiped out the native Dacians and refilled their land with loyal Roman citizens - hence, Romania.
Oh boy. .... The first thing is that for a LONG time, people just thought the rustic peasants were speaking badly. The very first use of French in an official capacity (instead of Latin) was Serment de Strasbourg in 842 (oaths between ?grandsons? of Charlemagne concerning the split of Empire. And French was the Romance tongue that evolved fastest and furthest.
Italian doesn't get perceived as a 'real' language until much later (IIRC ~1100 ).
One reason that the Romance languages share similarities with each other (which they don't share with Classical Latin) is that they are descended from Vulgar Latin which had evolved some before the Roman Empire broke up. That's the real issue. When you had one Empire with Legions being moved from west to east, from north to south, and similarly officials, etc., there was a unifying force to the language. Once the Empire broke up, each area could go on its own way.
These are some of the reasons that Greek didn't evolve the same way - the Eastern Empire hung on much longer, with a central unifying structure. Thus modern Greek is closer to Classical Greek than most Romance tongues are to Latin. Then, when the Empire did fall, Greek was replaced by the invaders' languages (largely), so Bulgarian is Slavic and Turkish is Turkic, and neither is a Greek dialect. Whereas, French is NOT Frankish and the various tongues of Iberia are not Gothic.
(I hope no one else said the same thing in the hours between the start and finish of this post!
)Specific examples changes in Vulgar Latin - Caballus meant 'nag' in Classical, simply means 'horse' in Vulgar, hence all the forms for 'horse' in modern Romance; Similarly "Testa"=pot classically, became slang and then standard Vulgar for "head" (similar to English slang 'mug' for face, I suppose); "Octo" drops the "c" in everything but ?Sardinian? (Spanish 'ocho' is from *otto, IIRC)
There was also a common sound shift with 'u' (when pronounced as 'w') becoming 'v', some intervocalic 'b' moving toward 'v' (which makes e.g. 'vocabo - I will call' almost indistinguishable from 'vocavo - I called'. THis latter change making classical grammar for tenses MUCH harder to deal with, leading to further changes there - like auxiliary verbs. )
There was also a common sound shift with 'u' (when pronounced as 'w') becoming 'v', some intervocalic 'b' moving toward 'v' (which makes e.g. 'vocabo - I will call' almost indistinguishable from 'vocavo - I called'. THis latter change making classical grammar for tenses MUCH harder to deal with, leading to further changes there - like auxiliary verbs. )
Before and during the early Roman period, a number of languages related to Latin were spoken in central and southern Italy. After the early Roman state came to dominate the Italian Peninsula, Latin became the dominant language here.
However, Latin never completely replaced the other Italian languages, and modern Italian is basically an amalgam of vulgar Latin and the various Italian languages.
And it appears that various regional Italian dialects still bear strong influences from the languages that were spoken here before the Roman age.
Even if the Western Roman Empire would have remained intact, the various dialects of vulgar Latin would have developed into separate languages anyway.
However, if the Western Roman Empire would have remained intact, Latin would most propably still be used on the official level.
And such an "official Latin" language could very well play a similar role as Modern Standard Arabic does in the Arab countries.
I like the bumper sticker I saw once at a con:
Sola lingua bona lingua mortua est
(or sometihng on that close order)
Sola lingua bona lingua mortua est
(or sometihng on that close order)
I don't consider Latin to be a dead language. Since Latin is the basis for a number of other languages such as the Romance Languages, it sort of lives on in those languages that developed out of it. Taking two years of Latin in high school helped me greatly in understanding more about my own native American English. When I encounter a word I'm not familiar with I can often get a sense of its meaning by taking it back to a Latin root word.
The Roman Catholic Church continued to use Latin for Mass until Vatican II, and I think still uses it for some official church documents. I understand there is a movement within The Catholic Church to move back to using Latin, and The Vatican is allowing the old Tridentine Mass in Latin to be used again in a number of parishes where a number members have petitioned to request it.
So when you ask, "how did Latin die?", I don't think it died so much as it changed its status and usage.
The Roman Catholic Church continued to use Latin for Mass until Vatican II, and I think still uses it for some official church documents. I understand there is a movement within The Catholic Church to move back to using Latin, and The Vatican is allowing the old Tridentine Mass in Latin to be used again in a number of parishes where a number members have petitioned to request it.
So when you ask, "how did Latin die?", I don't think it died so much as it changed its status and usage.
It hasn't really died. The Catholic Church uses Latin for ALL church documents (the authoritative version, anyway), and even today, theoretically the default language of all post-Vatican II Masses is Latin (in practice, vernacular indults were given left, right and center).
Then there's law, and medicine, and much of academia.
OOC: And as to the point about the Tridentine Missals, it also applies to a priest who celebrates in privately.
Susano
Banned
Bah! If it wasnt for the Carolingan Renaissance with uts monks here, monks there, standard latin would not have survived so amply...
Latin never died! It ran away, to join the circus! At least, that's what my parents said, when I was five......
Nope. ε and αι are, but η is pronounced ee as in see- as are οι, ει, ι & υ! Still means that Modern Greek is not very easy to spell.
However, it could be worse. Until the 80s, Modern Greek retained 2 breathing marks (on the first letter of words starting with a vowel or ρ) that had no meaning whatsoever, and 3 accents that meant the exact same thing. There are some rules that make spelling easier now- for instance, the "ee" sound at the end of the plural of a noun ending in "ος" is "οι" - but which breathing to use had to be learnt entirely by rote.
MrP
Banned
Really? Oh, sorry! As y'can tell, I'm not a fluent speaker by any means! I stand corrected.
As far as I am aware (and I don't exactly recall where I read that), Latin was widely used in Europe until there were massive attempts to eliminate Vulgar Latin. Thus, the use of Latin became limited to those who had the necessary money and time to learn a complicated language. Their numbers became less and less, and so the use of it nearly died out.